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Annual Progress Report
Research Centres scheme
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To be completed by the Director of the Research Centre, as award-holder at the end of each year of the Research Centre award period. Please type throughout. If you prefer, you may paste separately word-processed text onto the form, and expand the boxes as necessary.
The award-holder must sign the Annual Progress Report which should also be countersigned by the Chair of the Management Committee and the Vice-Chancellor or Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) of the host institution and the partner institutions(s) to confirm that the research supported by the award has been carried out as described.
Signatures are also required on the Budget Statement to confirm that the grant has been spent in accordance with the terms and conditions of the award.
|Name of Director | |Address for correspondence |
| Title |Professor | |AHRC CentreLGS, Kent Law School |
| | | | |
| First name |Davina | |University of Kent |
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| Surname |Cooper | |Canterbury, Kent |
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| Award ref |RC/APN 15705 | |Post code |CT2 7NS |
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| | | |Tel No |1227824172 |
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| | | |Email |D.S.Cooper@kent.ac.uk |
Host institution at which award is held:
|University of Kent |
|Year of Award: |Year 1 |Year 2 |Year 3 |Year 4 |
|(please tick as appropriate) | | | | |
If your award has ended, do not use this form; you should download and complete an End of Award report form.
|Total amount awarded for this |£ 201,438 | |
|project year: | | |
Title of Research Centre:
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|AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality |
|Dates: |Start date of |1 |6 |2004 | |End date of Centre|31 |5 |2009 |
| |Centre | | | | | | | | |
(These should be the dates as stated on your acceptance form unless otherwise approved in writing by the AHRC. You should attach a copy of any approval.)
Please attach a copy of the Centre’s most recent and approved Strategic and Operational Plan. Also please design, complete and submit a simple table outlining the key milestones and outcomes for the research programme/activities.
Note: If the original plan has significantly updated then a copy of the Centre’s original Strategic and Operational Plan should also be attached. These documents will be passed to the assessors to help them assess what progress the Centre has made over the past year. You should refer to the above document(s) when completing the sections below.
1. Changes
With reference to your original Strategic and Operational Plan, please indicate any significant changes which have occurred during this project year, in terms of the aims and objectives, research programme and activities, the outcomes and targets, dissemination/exploitation and outreach, collaboration, institutional support, and the people who have worked on the project (please state progress made in recruiting research assistants/other staff to the project). You should explain the rationale for the changes and indicate whether they were approved by the Management Committee and the AHRC. Missed milestones should be covered by the information you give in the outcomes and target box below.
|Kind of Change |Details and Rationale for the changes |Approved Y/N |
|Aims and Objectives |No changes | |
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|Research Programme and |The Centre determined (with MC support) not to hold another large international |Y |
|activities |conference for year 5, but to organise separate research-intensive workshops – oriented| |
| |to specific outputs such as journal special issues or a book publication. In addition, | |
| |there will be a 2-day event at the end of the project (3-4 April 2009) to celebrate the | |
| |centre’s achievements, and to explore agendas for future work. This will include invited| |
| |key note speakers, Centre members and Centre friends (our wider network of several | |
| |hundred academics and others). | |
| | | |
| |The rationale for the change is three-fold: first, the primary benefits of a large | |
| |conference (communicating a diversity of research, international networking) have been | |
| |well met over the Centre’s life-time; second, organising another large conference would | |
| |not be the best use of resources at this point; third, a conference would need to take | |
| |place early in year 5 (for financial and administrative reasons), yet the Centre just | |
| |held a large international conference in June 2007. | |
| | | |
| |This change in outputs was endorsed by the Management Committee on 6 November 2007 | |
|Outcomes and Targets |As per changes in activities specified above | |
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|Dissemination/ |No changes | |
|Exploitation and Outreach | | |
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|Collaboration |No changes | |
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|Institutional Support |No changes | |
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|People |Harriet Samuels has taken over from Rosemary Auchmuty as Associate Director at | |
| |Westminster University (due to Rosemary’s appointment at Reading University) | |
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| |Toni Williams and Kate Bedford (University of Kent) have jointly taken over coordination| |
| |of the Governance & Regulation Research Cluster from Joanne Conaghan | |
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| |Marie Fox (Keele University) has taken over the coordination of the Healthcare & | |
| |Bio-ethics Research Cluster from Ruth Fletcher (Ruth Fletcher remains Associate Director| |
| |in Keele) | |
| | | |
| |Anisa de Jong (coordinator) returned from adoption leave on 25 September 2007 but | |
| |reduced her appointment from full time to 0.8 FTE. | |
| | | |
| |Penny Bernard (assistant coordinator, 0.4 FTE) resigned on 26 December 2007. | |
| | | |
| |Milica Vicentijevic has been appointed in a newly created post of assistant co-ordinator| |
| |with increased responsibilities (0.6 FTE, grade 5) from 2 June 2008. | |
| | | |
| |Rosie Harding is appointed as the coordinator of postgraduate and early career | |
| |developments. She has been allocated 15 hours teaching buy out: 7.5 hours are covered by| |
| |Keele Law School and 7.5 hours by CentreLGS | |
If there are any additional unforeseen changes to the Centre’s research programme and activities, please provide details and reasons below.
|Additional activity: Kate Bedford has joined CentreLGS as a RCUK Research Fellow |
2. Achievements to date
Using your most recent and approved Strategic and Operational Plan (attached) as a framework for your response, please briefly identify what you consider to be the main achievements or highlights of the Centre during this project year. Your response should be evidence-based.
Development of the Thematic Priorities
1] Development of key concepts and methods:
The Centre’s broad themes are evident in the work of the research clusters, professional development and wider knowledge transfer (see below). However, the Centre has also advanced its methodological, conceptual and intersectional themes more generally in its work. While much of this has taken place through the work of the research clusters I want to draw attention to the following activities:
Intersectionality and Beyond: Law Power and the Politics of Location
This book emerged out of the conference on Theorising Intersectionality held during the Centre’s first year, with additional contributions from several Centre members, including Davina Cooper and Rosemary Hunter. The book explores the ways in which intersectionality can provide a productive analytical lens as well as exploring more theoretically limits to its usefulness. The book also considers alternative conceptual frameworks. Year 4 of the Centre was spent reading and commenting on chapter drafts in order to develop the book’s conceptual and analytical aspects. It was submitted early this spring and will be published by Routledge Cavendish, autumn 2008.
Agency, Sexuality and the Law
This was a major event, described in more detail below. As well as advancing our international networks and partnerships with Indian scholars, it provided a focused 3 day event to explore the concept of agency. This is a crucial term for thinking about both the power and limitations of social relations and structures. Although no consensus was reached on how to envisage agency, it proved a highly productive, in depth discussion, which raised a number of other conceptual issues relating to how we think about choice, decision-making and autonomy.
Special Methodology section of Feminist Theory
This came out of a set of papers given at a roundtable at Gender Unbound (June 2007) by well known academics, Carol Smart, Rosemary Hennessy, Lisa Adkins and Les Moran on the methodological challenges for feminist scholarship in studying the intangible, the hidden and the virtual. Year 4 was spent putting these papers together for a Special Section of Feminist Theory. First drafts of the papers are now being circulated for comment, with a final submission deadline of the collection to the journal of October 2008.
2) Clustered thematic research (see below)
3) Comparative / cross-national perspectives
Continuing conversations with non-UK academics was a major focus for the Centre in year 4. In addition to a busy international visiting academics programme, and the very successful bi-national Agency workshop, held in Goa, the Centre organised an Anglo-Canadian series of 8 panels at the US law & Society Association Annual Conference, held in Montreal (29 May -1 June). These panels included an ‘author meets readers’ discussion of a recent Canadian book on gender-related law reform, a large, organised discussion of feminist critique, as well as 6 research-paper panels on topics ranging from lesbian and gay civil partnerships in the UK, to sexually utopian literature, to World Bank funding of gender programmes in Argentina.
This year also saw a workshop on Gender and Regulation: A Global/ Local Conversation (13-14 June 2008), with 35 participants and international speakers. The aim of this workshop was to extend previous discussions about intimacy and the material, which have largely had a Northern focus, to thinking about how these issues get played out in and across transnational sites.
4) Centre of expertise & dissemination
Various initiatives have been pursued under this heading as identified elsewhere in this report, including dissemination through academic publication and through the mass media. I would like to here highlight three initiatives/ events which focus on crossing the academic/ non-academic boundary:
Feminism with Fizz
This evening venture, held at Westminster University, provides a space for academics and non-academics to come together to discuss different issues of feminist concern in a relaxed, congenial environment, drawing on an invited panel format. Events held include: feminism and parenting, feminism and ageing, feminism and style, and feminism and literature. These events are successful in offering a stimulating enjoyable means of sharing and transferring ideas and knowledge. It allows interested non-academics to hear about recent academic debates and developments, and gives academics an opportunity to think about issues in new, less academically conventional ways.
Hilary Charlesworth’s annual lecture
Professor Hilary Charlesworth gave an excellent, accessible lecture on women and peace, at Westminster University (15 May 2008). This was our best attended annual lecture, and about 150 people registered to come. Many were non-academics from a variety of women and other peace organisations. Hilary Charlesworth’s lecture will be the first annual lecture to be published in Feminist Legal Studies (a new initiative, which we hope will continue). Included also in this issue will be responses to and comments on the lecture from several NGO actors working in related fields.
In Conversation
Hilary Charlesworth’s visit also kicked off another new venture, organised by Harriet Samuels and Emma McLean – a series of digitally taped conversations between academics and non-academics, which will be downloadable from our website. The first involved Hilary Charlesworth in conversation with several NGO actors. More such conversations are planned for next year.
Activities
Development of Thematic Research (Research Clusters)
a) Research Cluster: Governance & Regulation (co-ordinators: Toni Williams & Kate Bedford, Kent)
Research in this cluster has continued to develop around the strands of citizenship (sexual, economic and national/supranational); the production, reproduction and regulation of intimacy through law, the economy and other sites of norms, coercion and control; and governance of and by communities, including religious and faith communities.
In 2007-08 the cluster sought specifically to strengthen scholarly engagement with the transnational, comparative and international governance and regulation of gender and sexuality. This development advances the Centre’s Thematic Priority 3 (Developing and interrogating comparative, cross-national understandings of the law, gender and sexuality relationship). It also builds on earlier Centre activities and events that have explored the complex interrelationships among the “global”, the national, and the local in sexuality and gender regulation; it strengthens the Centre’s capacity to contribute to a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship; and it connects Centre members to new networks in which to circulate their work.
The comparative and transnational orientation of the cluster’s work was fundamental to the workshop titled “Agency, sexuality and law – globalising economies, localising cultures, politicising states”, co-organised by Jane Krishnadas and Ruth Fletcher with colleagues at the Tata Institute in Mumbai and described in detail elsewhere in this report.
Transnational and comparative approaches to gender and sexuality research also figured prominently in a one-day workshop held at Keele in February 2008, attended by some 20 Centre members from this research cluster, drawn from all three institutional sites. This workshop served as space for sharing work and a means to create links between established Centre members and the early career scholars and other new colleagues who have recently joined the Centre’s component institutions. In addition to offering participants feedback on early stage research projects, which is a vital aspect of the cluster’s research development role, the workshop’s rich, spirited and thought-provoking discussions contributed to the development of the structure and scholarly goals of the two-day cluster workshop scheduled for June 2008, titled “Regulation and Gender: a global/local conversation”.
The June workshop (still to be held at the time of writing of this report, and further details below) aims to create intellectual space to interrogate the gendered and sexualized dimensions of regulation shaping the contemporary global order. The workshop, which is thematically related to other events held this year, seeks to address the persistence of states as powerful regulators of citizen’s conduct in a world constructed as increasingly “global” and “local”; to advance understanding about how changes in macro-level governance are connected with shifts in the regulation of micro-level behaviour; and to interrogate linkages between developments in international political economy and what Jon Binnie has called the ‘mess and goo’ of sexuality in global frame.
To our knowledge, this is the first international conference of its kind on gender and regulation. We have now been approached by the editors of a leading interdisciplinary journal about publication of a selection of papers and we expect the workshop to contribute to critical debates about gender, sexuality and regulation under conditions of global economic restructuring. We also expect this workshop to stimulate additional research questions in the field of gender, sexuality and transnational regulation, which will form the basis of an application in January 2009 to the International Institute for the Sociology of Law for a workshop at its Onati Centre in Spring 2010. If the application were successful we would expect to be able to solicit papers of publishable quality for the book series linked to the workshop.
In addition to these initiatives, cluster co-coordinator Kate Bedford has worked throughout the year to embed within the Centre the results of one of her previous projects (an international colloquium on sexual and economic justice, held in New York in November 2007), and cluster members discussed follow up from the New York event at the Keele workshop in February. Proposals for an ESRC seminar series on sexualities and markets are in progress as a result.
b) Research Cluster: Healthcare & Bio-ethics (co-ordinator: Marie Fox, Keele)
Three main developments have taken place over the last year in this research cluster:
First, Ruth Fletcher and Marie Fox are in the final stages of editing a special issue of the Medical Law Review entitled “Theorising Legal Embodiment.” The aim of this special issue is to consider critically the parameters of contemporary Health Care Law, the methodologies it employs, and how it engages with other disciplines. Specifically, we examine how this discipline might benefit from an encounter with feminist theories of embodiment – which has been a key intellectual resource within the Centre’s work. We argue that this would be useful in addressing the criticism that Health Care Law and Bioethics fail to adequately theorise the body, which is often the object of its analysis. This special issue would not have been possible without CentreLGS support, and represents an important attempt at rapprochement between health care law and feminist theory in the leading specialist journal in the field. As detailed below in terms of output, three of the contributions are written by Centre members – Fletcher, Fox and McCandless; MacKenzie, and Wilkinson. Versions of these papers, plus the contribution by Emily Jackson on “Degendering Reproduction”, were initially presented at the Centre LGS workshops within this cluster - “Engendering Bioethics” (Keele, November 2005) and “Interrogating Embodiment” (Kent, November 2006). Julie McCandless provided invaluable research assistance (funded by Centre LGS) which formed the basis for the lead paper that introduces the collection. In addition Melanie Latham’s contribution “The Shape of Things to Come” was initially presented at Gender Unbound.
Secondly, somatechnics methodologies have become an important intellectual influence on the research of Centre members. Somatechnics research aims to facilitate inter-disciplinary research on embodiment by helping bridge the divide between the sciences, arts, and humanities through the development, articulation, and dissemination of critically informed notions of bodily formation and transformation. This methodology thus fits with the Centre LGS aims of considering how humanities and cultural studies research can intersect productively with social science research. This development was stimulated in particular by links with Centre visitor Nikki Sullivan (who was based at Kent and Keele in Autumn 2007). Nikki convenes the Somtechnics research cluster at Macquarie University, Sydney (see ). As a result Centre Members, Fox, Mackenzie and Thomson have established international research links with Cultural Studies at Macquarie, having been invited to deliver papers in panels and contribute to an edited collection on somatechnics (see below). This collaboration has been useful in terms of re-thinking existing Centre work on embodied choices in the fields of elective surgery and genital cutting, while also stimulating a new research project by Fox and Thomson exploring cultural representations of embodiment and trans-biology.
Thirdly, CentreLGS work on gender and reproduction was enhanced by a one day workshop on Health and Masculinity hosted by Westminster in November 2007. This took the form of an author meets readers session, where Centre member McCandless, Sheldon and Thomson, along with Imogen Goold, Jonathan Ives, Emily Jackson and Therese Murphy responded to key themes underpinning Cynthia Daniel’s 2006 monograph Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Reproduction (OUP). Nineteen participants were involved in this event, which addressed the issues of how legal concepts may be transported or understood between jurisdictions, the methodologies employed in masculinities research (with a particular focus on empirical and ethnographic work) and the engendering of gametes. This workshop has also stimulated plans for a further workshop on reproduction and regulation which will consider the impact of the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, to take place at Keele in April 2009 organised by Fox, Sheldon, Thomson and Wilkinson. Wilkinson has been awarded funding by the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice at Keele to buy out research time to engage in preliminary work on an AHRC grant proposal in relation to this project.
c) Research Cluster: Law & Culture (co-ordinator: Lieve Gies, Keele)
This year’s activities and developments have been underpinned by the strategic decision to focus on law and culture concepts that to a significant extent already inform our work in the various thematic priority areas. We have also begun to consider how the Centre’s achievements can be built and expanded on in post-Centre research projects.
The one-day workshop in this research cluster this year ‘Mobilising the Imaginary: The ‘Unreal’ in Law, Gender and Sexuality Research’ was held at Keele on 1 May 2008. The workshop enabled us to revisit some of the theoretical building blocks which already featured prominently in previous Centre events. This was aimed at interrogating the critical capacity of notions of fantasy, imaginary and fiction so as to map out both their appeal and inevitable limitations. (See under ‘conferences & events’ for more details).
Two other areas which we further developed this year are religion and multiculturalism, and popular culture. This has created opportunities for collaboration and dialogue between established academics, new career entrants and doctoral students (e.g. the LSA/RCSL 2007 panel on ‘Judicial Readings of Race, Ethnicity and Religion’). Through our ongoing cross-disciplinary work on reality television, involving both Centre members and non-members, we have also been able to raise the profile of the Centre by positioning it as a centre of expertise in the area of law and popular culture.
We have earmarked gender, culture and technology as an area of future collaboration to be developed in the final year of the Centre to serve as a basis for post-Centre activities. A further area of current and future collaboration involves the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), a growing area of scholarship to which we hope to add value by offering an analysis which is explicitly grounded in a cultural-legal perspective. Currently in the literature review stage, the aim of this project is to look at the changing aesthetics and politics of the ESC in an expanding Europe through the lens of cultural governance, sexuality and law.
Research Funding/Pump Priming
Each of the research cluster co-ordinators was given financial support for research assistance, as well as teaching buy outs, in order to further develop the research clusters. In addition, the following research projects by Centre members were supported:
Davina Cooper (Kent): Research assistance (£1,500) towards a larger project on everyday utopias. This supported writing a chapter on inequalities within everyday utopias for the Centre’s forthcoming collection: Intersectionality and Beyond, as well as work on other papers leading to a monograph: Everyday Utopias: Reinventing the Social and the Power of Stranger Spaces.
Lieve Gies (Keele): Travel and subsistence (£750) as well as research support (£300) with the aim of designing a collaborative Centre project on the place of the Eurovision contest in the wider European project and the fostering of shared European identity. This is exploratory research which could lead to the design of a larger project resulting in conference presentations and journal publications.
Didi Herman (Kent): Research support (£750) for an ongoing project on Jews and Jewishness in English Case Law. This is supporting work for a contracted monograph with OUP.
Tsachi Keren-Paz (Keele): Research assistance (£750) for a project dealing with developing effective private law remedies to victims of sex trafficking. The aim is for the broad project it eventually lead to a monograph and a series of articles. The outcomes are being disseminated in conferences, workshops and similar activities.
Conferences & Events
Main events
Health and Masculinity Workshop with Cynthia Daniels, 9 November 2007, Westminster
A one day workshop in the healthcare & bio-ethics research cluster. The workshop took the format of Author Meets Readers. Cynthia Daniels in conversation with Jonathan Ives, Emily Jackson, Julie McCandless, Therese Murphy, Sally Sheldon, Michael Thomson about her book ’ Exposing Men: the Science and Politics of Male Reproduction (OUP 2006)
Agency, sexuality and law - globalising economies, localising cultures, politicising states, 11-13 December 2007, India
CentreLGS co-hosted a three-day research workshop on the topic of agency, sexuality and law, with colleagues from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, at the International Centre, Goa. The workshop welcomed 36 participants from India, the UK and Australia (including 7 PhD students), and discussed 27 presentations, two films and one performance during 15 sessions.
Participants shared a critique of the liberal concept of agency as the expression of the free will of the individual, a frustration with the reading of agency as an effect of structure or discourse and a commitment to a critical concept and practice of agency. Participants addressed the possibilities of such an agency through a wide range of contexts along the following themes:
Organising embodiment (disabled women’s articulation of identity, management techniques for bipolar disorder in the UK, Mumbai dance bar girls’ organising, veiling practices and secularism, constructions of masculinity in Mumbai slum communities, queer bodies and the HIV/AIDS industry, transgender families and social movements, Dalit activism and identity, caste differences in prostitution).
Governing sexuality (sexual economies and peace support operations, reconstruction strategies in post-earthquake and post-industrialisation zones, utopian practices in a Toronto women’s bathhouse, arguments for same sex marriage, informal markets and sex selection practices, transnational surrogacy and abortion arrangements, public interest litigation and public sector activism, heteronormative policy at the World Bank).
Representing culture (middle class sexuality and consumption, celebrity sexuality in Bollywood, gendered access to urban spaces, emotions and lawscapes, filmic representations of the ‘other’).
Through the presentations and discussions the following key points emerged: Several people identified consciousness as a necessary element of agency and thought that future energy might be well spent on revisiting the concept of consciousness from a feminist/critical perspective. Participants thought that there was a need for a conception of agency as a vehicle for challenging imbalances of power and the idea that the powerful are constrained in their ability to alter the workings of power. A critical conception of agency was also thought to be useful because it assumes that people can have an individual and/or collective impact on the conditions of their existence, which may be articulated in non-literal, indirect, multi-dimensional and/or burdened ways. Participants are taking these insights and reflections forward through their individual research projects, a collaborative conversation in the CentreLGS 2008 newsletter, and planning for an edited collection, led by Lakshmi Lingam, TISS.
Workshop for centre members only in the governance & regulation cluster, 22 February 2008, Keele
Attended by some 20 Centre members. The theme of the workshop was agency; links between the transnational and the interpersonal; alternative globalizations , and the governance of intimacy, including through the economic.
PECANS Workshop, 23-24 April 2008, Westminster
This year’s workshop for postgraduate and early career academics, which took place at the University of Westminster on 23 and 24 April 2008, was once again organised by Rosie Harding and attracted about 20 participants. One day was devoted to sessions on skills-development, including ‘surviving the viva’, ‘supervision skills’ and ‘writing for publication’ led by Centre members. The second day was run as a mini-conference on the theme: Reconfiguring Resistance. Of the evaluation forms received, 80% rated the workshop as ‘excellent’, and the rest ‘good’. Comments from participants included: ‘Keep up the excellent combination of advice and paper sessions’ and ‘I did learn loads and it may in fact be helpful in my own work’
Mobilising the imaginary: The ‘unreal’ in law, gender and sexuality research, 1 May 2008, Keele
A one day workshop by the Law and Culture Research Cluster. This workshop created a forum in which participants could discuss what concepts relating to the utopian, the virtual, the fantastic, the imaginary and the fictitious have to offer to critical legal analysis. The ‘and’ in law ‘and’ literature formed the most important focus of discussion, enabling us to interrogate the interdisciplinary encounters, (dis)junctures and liaisons which it implies. The event centred around four pre-circulated papers which were subjected to in-depth discussion by authors, discussants and other participants. The papers were authored by Maria Aristodemou (Birkbeck), Martin Kayman (Cardiff), Vikki Bell (Goldsmiths) and Andrew Sharpe (Keele). The workshop was extremely well received by the majority of participants (70% rated the event as ‘excellent’ and 25% as ‘good’ on the evaluation forms). Some comments: ‘I learnt a great deal today (…) found the contribution to knowledge excellent’. ‘Having just 4 papers gave a perfect amount of time for discussion’. ‘The time/space given to each paper facilitated deeper consideration of cross-cutting themes’.
CentreLGS Annual lecture by Hilary Charlesworth, “Are Women Peaceful? Reflections on the role of women in peace building”, 15th May 2008, Westminster
Women have played an important part in peacebuilding in many parts of the world. This year’s lecture considered the roles women have taken in peacebuilding in Bougainville, Timor-Leste and the Solomons in particular and the problems they face in these 'post-conflict' societies. Hilary Charlesworth is a Federation Fellow and Director of the Centre for International Governance and Justice, ANU. She also holds an appointment as Professor of International Law and Human Rights in the Faculty of Law, ANU. The Annual lecture attracted a very good turn-out with 150 attendees registered. The lecture will appear in Feminist legal Studies along with written responses, as a strategy to give the Centre’s annual lectures wider visibility.
Beyond Critique in Law, Gender and Sexuality, 31 May - 1 June 2008, Stream at the Law and Society Association Conference, Montreal, Canada
The Centre co-organised with UBC, Canada a series of inter-linked panels at this large conference. Scholars, activists and policy-makers in the gender/ sexuality arena have always moved between critique, reform, and more radical kinds of rupture or change. This stream explored the local, national, transnational and global possibilities, at this current historical juncture, of moving beyond critique. The Centre provided financial support for 10 centre members to participate in this stream. Feedback on the stream was very positive, and we intend to continue the conversation with a series of panels at the 2009 LSA, in Denver, Colorado.
Gender and Regulation - A Global / Local conversation about linkages between macro and micro regulation in global and local domains, 13th-14th June, Kent
A two day workshop in the Governance & Regulation research cluster. Discussion topics included:
- regulation and normativity
- recognition and regulation in/through law
- new (trans)national configurations of gender and sexuality
- International Financial Institutions as sites for/of gender regulation
- the relationship between social movements and regulation
Main speakers:
Ruth Buchanan, Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, at York University, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Jasbir Puar, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University
Irene León, a member of the Board of Directors of Agencia Latinoamericana de Información (ALAI) and director of its Women's Program
The workshop attracted 35 participants. Information from the evaluation forms was not yet available at the time of writing this report.
Other Centre supported events
Sex Work: Regulating the Many Faces of Sexual Labour, 17th October 2007, Keele
This workshop brought academic expertise on the subject of commercial sex together with representatives from the sex work community. It generated some original and lively discussion on the problems of regulating an industry which encompasses such huge diversity in terms of workers, workplaces and ways of working.
Two events in the Utopian Practices Seminar Series: ‘Property’ on 10 November 2007 in Westminster and ‘Citizenship’ on 17 May 2008 in Kent. These workshops are part of an ESRC funded series.
Securing Humanity: Perspectives from International Law, 14th of November 2007, Westminster
Centre members attending conferences and presenting papers
The Centre financially supported members to attend events that were (co-) organised by the Centre itself, as mentioned above. In addition, the following participation by Centre members at external workshops and conferences were supported:
Davina Cooper:“Author Meets Reader: A Discussion of Janet Halley's Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism”, 8 October 2007, Khalili Lecture Theatre, School of Oriental and African Studies
Sharon Fitzgerald: Critical Legal Conference (CLC), 14-16 September 2007, Birkbeck School of Law
Michael Thomson and Marie Fox: Association for Cultural Studies Annual Conference, 3-7 July 2008, Kingston, Jamaica
Kate Bedford: Gender Equality and Politics: European Futures, 16 Feb 2007, University of Surrey, UK
Fabienne Jung: Lesbian Lives XV Conference: Writing lesbian Culture - theories and praxis, University College Dublin, WERRC, 15-16 February 2008
Rosemary Hunter: Re-writing Equality Symposium, 6-7 March 2008
Visiting Schemes
All of our visiting scholars gave seminars and lectures at the member institutions they visited. Several visitors also gave graduate seminars, participated in reading groups and other discussions, and read, commented and discussed Centre members’ work.
17 - 29 March 2008: Lisa Freeman, PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning, and is a Junior Fellow at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, Canada. Research interests: the interconnections between law and space in the city with particular emphasis on urban governance, citizenship and housing security; the licensing procedure for rooming houses in Toront; how queer and feminist theory provide context and insight for exploring how regulating space relates to the regulation of identities.
15 -31 March 2008: Judy Fudge, Professor and Chair in Law, University of Victoria, Canada. Research interests: developing a feminist materialist and political economy approach to law in general and labour law in particular; advancing a conception of labour law that is attentive to the gendered nature of social reproduction; feminist legal equality analysis critically engaging with the rights versus recognition debate.
28 February - 8 March 2008: Cheshire Calhoun, Professor of Philosophy, Arizona State University, USA. Research interests: normative ethics, moral psychology, feminist philosophy, and lesbian and gay studies. Her publications include Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet and essays on forgiveness, integrity, shame, common decency, and civility. She has been particularly interested in arguments for same-sex marriage rights in the US. Her most recent work centers on the temporal nature of agency and the necessary background conditions for taking an interest in one's own agency. That work includes essays on depression and demoralization, meaning in life, hope, and commitment.
18 - 24 November 2007: Claudia Card, Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, USA Research Interests: ethics and social philosophy, and her research for the past several years has been on the concept of evil, the forms it takes, and responses to it.
9 - 17 November 2007: Miranda Joseph, Professor of Women's Studies, University of Arizona. Research Interests: She brings together Marxist and poststructuralist theory to explore the mutually constitutive relationship between community and capitalism. She uses the tools of cultural studies - theory, ethnography, discourse analysis - to explore the production of contemporary social formations, including LGBT community and academic fields such as Women's Studies, economic practices such as production, consumption and debt in the context of globalization, and institutions such as nonprofit organizations and prisons.
8 - 28 November 2007: Irene Watson, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney, Australia. Research Interests: She belongs to the Tanganekald and Meintangk peoples of the south east of South Australia and is well known for her activism and writings against and about the impact of colonialism upon Aboriginal peoples. In 1996 Irene was appointed as one of seven indigenous judges to the First Nations International Court of Justice sitting in Ottawa Canada.
1 - 29 October 2007: Nikki Sullivan, Director, Somatechnics Research Centre, Division of Society, Media, Culture and Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Research Interests: Sexuality Studies and Body Modification Studies. Nikki has published research on transgenderism, cosmetic surgery, 'non-mainstream' body modification, 'self-mutilation', elective amputation, and genital modification.
1 - 21 October 2007: Brinda Bose, Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India. Research Interests: postcolonial, gender and cultural studies, with a focus on India. Currently completing a manuscript on significations of the sexualized body in contemporary Indian cultural texts. Her research project at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library is on urban sexualities in contemporary Indian art/parallel cinema.
23 September - 10 October 2007: Anna Kirkland, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Political Science, University of Michigan, USA. Research Interests: gender and sexuality in American law and the politics of rights and identity. Her research has focused on antidiscrimination and rights claiming, particularly the claims of groups who are not included in American antidiscrimination laws (transgender and fat people, for example). Her next project is a multi-method study of diversity rhetoric, higher education, and citizenship in the U.S. She is also interested in the politics of health, disability studies, and family law.
Postgraduate training and new career entrant development
Centre PG members have continued to participate actively in all Centre conferences and workshops, giving papers and/or assisting with organising. The Centre provided financial assistance where necessary, including for four postgraduate students to participate in the ‘Agency, sexuality and law - globalising economies, localising cultures, politicising states’ conference in December 2007 in India, and for two postgraduate students to participate in the CentreLGS / UBC ‘Beyond Critique’ stream at the Law and Society Annual Meeting in Montreal in May/June 2008.
The PECANS (Postgraduate and Early Career) Network has continued to expand and develop its own website []. Of special note is the ‘PECANS Directory’ which now has both a database of over 50 current PG research projects in the LGS field, and a directory of LGS supervisors, which aims to help prospective PGR students to find an appropriate supervisor. The PECANS email list, directory and forum aim to enable PGs working in the area of Law, Gender and Sexuality, wherever they are based internationally, to keep in touch and share ideas and experiences.
Centre PGs continue to benefit from the opportunity of making a formal visit to a different member institution where they are assigned an academic mentor working in a related field, give a seminar on their work, and have the opportunity to discuss their work with other Centre members in the field.
The annual PECANS Workshop continues to be the Centre’s main training activity. For details see above under ‘conferences & events’.
Centre members at Keele University secured British Council funding for a postgraduate (Masters level) student exchange between Keele and the Tata Institute of Social Science to facilitate 8 exchange visits a year between 2008-11
Keele hosted a postgraduate research development day workshop and 4 postgraduate film discussion sessions.
Completion of doctoral studies
Rosie Harding, University of Kent
Yemi Lawal, University of Kent
New centre member doctoral students
Wei Wei Cao, Keele University (supervised by Marie Fox and Stephen Wilkinson) is engaging in a comparative analysis of reproductive autonomy in China and the UK
Mitch Travis, Keele University (supervised by Michael Thomson and Marie Fox) is exploring the legal, ethical and embodied status of artificial intelligence.
Sameena Dalwai, Keele University (supervised by Jane Krishnadas), researching how the caste system on the one hand, and globalisation on the other are affecting notions of sexuality and sexual morality in India. Interested in assessing the dance bars as a sexual site of power and empowerment on which battles between state hegemony, law and collective action by the bar dancers are played out.
Laura Niada, University of Westminster (supervised by Oliver Phillips) is working on -Medicine Pricing in Sub-Saharan Africa Countries: The overlapping of national and international regulations and influences from the business sector”
Sarah Keenan, University of Kent (supervised by Davina Cooper) focusing her research on sexuality-based refugee claims made by women, using theories of spatiality and movement to discuss law’s construction of sexual identities, and to highlight the agency of queer women who cross borders and the possibilities for political transgression that their movement creates.
Website and Dissemination of output
Website:
Over the last year, the content of the website has continued to expand and the website is now just over 1000 pages. Since October 2007 we are monitoring visits to our website with Google Analytics. We have recorded visitors over the last year from 72 different countries.
The Centre considered - and undertook a trial of - using online discussion forums to prepare responses to government consultations by Centre members. However, we found that this was not the most productive way of bringing people together. The Centre is still using forums for the distribution of reading materials and information around specific events.
Publications:
Please find a full list of the Centre members publications as an appendix to this report. Below we have included a selection of publications linked to the target outputs.
Dissemination: 10 articles submitted for academic publication (including by RA's)
Cooper, Davina, '"Well, you go there to get off": Visiting feminist care ethics through a women's bathhouse' Feminist Theory vol. 8 (3) 243-262 (2007)
Cooper, Davina ‘Intersectional travels through everyday utopias: The difference sexual and economic dynamics make’ Grabham, Cooper, Krishnadas & Herman (eds) Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Place (Routledge-Cavendish, 2008)
Fletcher, Ruth; Fox, Marie and McCandless, Julie, "Legal Embodiment: Analysing the Body of HealthCare Law" 16 (3) Medical Law Review (2008)
Fletcher, Ruth, ‘Reproductive Justice: Equality, Diversity and Article 40 3 3’ J. Schweppe (ed) 25 years of protection? (Liffey Press, 2008)
Fox, Marie & Thomson, Michael, ‘Sexing the Cherry: Fixing Masculinity’ N. Sullivan and S. Murray (eds) Queer(ing) Somatechnics: Critical Engagements with Bodily (Trans) Formations (Ashgate, 2008)
Grabham, Emily, ‘Flagging the Skin: Corporeal Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging' Body and Society (forthcoming 2008)
Grabham, Emily, 'Impressing on the Law: Intersectionality, Ressentiment and Emotions' Grabham, Cooper, Krishnadas and Herman (eds) Theorising Intersectionality and Beyond: Social Inequality, Justice and the Politics of Subjectivity (Routledge: Cavendish, forthcoming 2008)
Grabham, Emily & Hunter, Rosemary, 'Encountering Human Rights: Gender/Sexuality, Activism and the Promise of Law’ Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies (issue 16/1, April 2008)
MacKenzie, Robin ‘Understandings of Embodiment & Medico-Lega Taxonomies: Elective Amputation, Enhancement, Functional Somatic Syndromes and Transableism’ 16 (3) Medical Law Review (2008)
MacKenzie, Robin ‘Queering Spinoza’s Somatechnics: Stem Cells and Strategic Sacralisation’ N. Sullivan and S. Murray (eds) Queer(ing) Somatechnics: Critical Engagements with Bodily (Trans) Formations (Ashgate, 2008)
Wilkinson, Stephen ‘Sexism, Sex Selection and Family Balancing’ 16 (3) Medical Law Review (2008)
Dissemination: at least 4 articles for other media
Conaghan, Joanne, BBC world service, OUTLOOK, participating in a discussion on rape law (November 2007)
Phillips, Oliver, ‘Playing politics with HIV’ Public Service Review: International Development 10 (May 2008)
Conaghan, Joanne, BBC Radio 4, Women's Hour: commenting on the Rape Law Reform proposals (December 2007)
Conaghan, Joanne, ‘Cameron on rape: crusading feminist or old-fashioned moralist?”, in: Women’s News. Ireland’s Feminist Magazine, winter issue 165, 2007
Rogers, Chrissie 'Sex talk: parenting children with learning disabilities' British Academy of Childhood Disability (BACD) Newsletter Spring, issue 13 (2008)
Jacob, Marie Andrée, radio interview about organ trafficking for a public affairs show, L'Ontario aujourd'hui, of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (4 February 2008). Link:
Conaghan, Joanne, BBC Radio 4, Women's Hour, discussing the Discrimination Law Review (June 2008)
Cooper, Davina, BBC Programme ‘Stop the World, part 3’, interview on her current project on everyday utopias (23 December 2007). Link:
Dissemination: 2 monograph contracts secured
Bedford, Kate, Developing Partnerships:Gender, Sexuality, and the post Washington Consensus World Bank, (contract secured with University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2009)
Walsh, Judy, The European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 (contract secured with Thomson Roundhall, Dublin)
Dissemination: 2 monograph manuscripts submitted to publisher
Krishnadas, Jane, Rights of Re-construction, Identities, Property and Place in Post-disaster to Globalisation processes (Pluto Press, manuscript submitted)
Sharpe, Andrew, Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law (Cavendish-Routledge, forthcoming 2009)
Dissemination: submitted 1 edited collection
Grabham, Emily; Cooper, Davina; Krishnadas, Jane; Herman, Didi, Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location (Routledge: Cavendish, 2008)
Newsletter:
The fourth and last CentreLGS Newsletter has been printed and is being disseminated (a copy is enclosed)
Policy Work / Consultations
Centre members continued to make important public policy interventions. These include:
Marie Fox, Stephen Wilkinson, Andrew Sharpe and Michael Thomson (Keele University) produced the Centre’s response to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s consultation on the ethical and social Implications of creating human/animal embryos in research. (July 2007)
Joanne Conaghan (University of Kent) produced the Centre’s response to the Discrimination Law Review’s consultation paper ‘A Framework for Fairness: Proposals for a Single Equality Bill for Great Britain’. (September 2007)
Toni Johnson (Kent) co-authored with David Harris, Therese Murphy and Jeffrey Kenner (Nottingham) a report on homophobia and sexual orientation discrimination in the UK for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. (February 2008)
Sharron Fitzgerald (Keele) co-ordinated the Centre’s response to the Home Office Border and Immigration Agency’s ‘Visitor Consultation Paper’. (March 2008)
Bedford, Kate and Janet Jakobsen. Towards a Vision of Sexual and Economic Justice: Colloquium Report. Ford Foundation, New York (forthcoming 2008).
Robin Mackenzie has been appointed to the Domestic Violence Policy Advisory Group of the Family Justice Council.
Other Knowledge Transfer
Centre members have continued to actively engage with non-academic sectors. Some examples of centre supported activities are:
Centre members in Keele hosted an open public seminar on sex work research and policy that included academic and NGO contributions (17 October 2007), a law-in-action open afternoon with academics, undergraduates and local community organisations, which addressed sexual violence, welfare and disability and debt regulation issues among other things (19 March 2008), and 2 further presentations on reproductive rights by Laura Riley of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and on women’s legal activism by Flavia Agnes of Majlis, India.
In the 2007/2008 academic year, three ‘Feminism with Fizz’ events took place at Westminster. The first event on Feminism and Ageing was a conversation between Ann Stewart, Reader in Law, University of Warwick, Professor Pat Thane, Institute of Historical Research and Sheila Taylor, activist. The second workshop on Feminism and Fashion was a discussion between Professor Reina Lewis, London College of Fashion and Liz Woodcraft barrister/novelist. The third workshop was on Feminism and Parenting where the discussion was between Ellie Lee, senior lecturer in social policy, University of Kent, Craig Lind, senior lecturer in law, University of Sussex and Sue O’Sullivan feminist activist, mother and grandmother. The last Feminism with Fizz event, this academic year, is Feminism, Law and Literature in June 2008. The attendance list shows that the events have attracted participants from legal practice, activists and non government organisations, academics and both graduate and undergraduate students. Three more sessions are planned for the next academic year.
At the University of Kent, the Centre continued its engagement with the work of the artist Jean Fraser. Jean gave a talk about her current project “Drawing Breath: A Coastal Pushbike Journey”; an arts and health landscape project celebrating breath and breathing and taking the form of a cycle journey from Whitstable to Hastings around the Kent and East Sussex coast.
The Feminist Judgments Project is a unique imaginative collaboration in which a group of feminist socio-legal scholars will write alternative feminist judgments in a series of significant cases in English law. Rather than simply critiquing existing judgments, the participants will engage in a practical, ‘real world’ exercise of judgment-writing, subject to the various constraints that bind appellate judges, including respect for existing legal principles, consciousness of the impact of decisions on the parties and the broader community, fidelity to the judicial oath, and consideration of the extent to which, and the form in which, a judge’s political commitments and social experience may or may not be introduced into her decision-making. The project aims to inaugurate a new form of critical socio-legal scholarship, which seeks to demonstrate in a sustained and disciplined way how judgments could have been written and cases could have been decided differently. Several members of the Centre are involved in the project, and the Centre will sponsor one of the project workshops - a methodological discussion of the process of (feminist) judgment writing - to be held at Westminster in October 2008.
Rosie Harding and Jane Krishnadas have piloted an innovative community legal education and legal literacy project called Law in Action!. Building on previous collaborative links with local community organisations, the homeless support group Brighter Futures, women’s counselling service Savana, and the Newcastle-under-Lyme Citizens Advice Bureau, the scheme encourages undergraduate students to get involved in research that is relevant to the local community. The projects explore issues such as the law relating to street prostitution, rape (including changes to civil actions stemming from a recent House of Lords decision (A v Hoare [2008] UKHL 6), gender discrimination in access to drug treatment services, irresponsible lending and forthcoming changes to incapacity benefits.
Grant Applications
Keele University secured British Council funding for a postgraduate (Masters level) student exchange between Keele and the Tata Institute of Social Science (see also above). The grant is worth £6,400 over a period of 3 years.
If there are any additional achievements that do not clearly relate to your most recent and approved Strategic and Operational Plan for this project year, please indicate these below. You may, for example, wish to provide evidence of unanticipated achievements.
Additional Achievements
Centre members and colleagues at Keele University have supplemented the international strategy of CentreLGS through the Gender, Sexuality and Law Visiting Fellowship (supported by the RI for Law, Politics and Justice), which welcomed 3 visiting fellows (Scott, University of New England, Australia; Greer, University of West England, UK; and Kaushik, Banasthali University, India); these scholars contributed to research themes on sex work, embodiment and human rights, and women prisoners, respectively.
Keele Centre members also co-organised 3 external seminars: ‘The Family’ hosted by Emory University, USA, as part of a British Council funded Keele/Emory network on comparing key concepts in feminist legal theory; ‘Feminism and International Law’, hosted by the Onati Institute for the Sociology of Law, Spain; and ‘Embyronic Hopes’, hosted by King’s College London, UK.
Additional support has been received from the three insitutions as detailed below:
From Kent:
- 20 hour teaching buy-out for Toni Williams as research cluster co-ordinator
- A reception hosted by the head of Kent Law School for 35 participants at the Regulation and Gender workshop, 13/14 June 2008
- £1000 contribution from the Research Support Fund of Kent Law School for Regulation and Gender workshop, 13/14 June 2008
- One new centre member PhD student is receiving a studentship from Kent Law School
Kent Law School has committed to fund the Centre for 5 years post May 2009. This will take the form of one day director's (academic coordinator) time; one day administrative support, and £5,000 p.a. for workshops/ conferences/ visitors etc.
From Keele:
- 20 hours teaching buy-out for Lieve Gies and Marie Fox as co-ordinators of research clusters in Law and Culture and Healthcare and Bioethics, respectively
- 7.5 hours teaching buy out for Rosie Harding as a coordinator of PECANS
- £3000 from the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice, Keele for visiting fellowships and research seminar costs
- ad hoc academic and administrative support from Keele Law School
- 0.2 appointment of student assistant for general GSL research support work
- Two new Centre member PhD students are receiving studentships from Keele Law School
From Westminster:
- Reception at the Annual Lecture hosted by the Pro VC for Research, Simon Jarvis
- 3 hours per week of secretarial assistance to Associate Director
- Free use of space in Central London for various events
We confirm that the research supported by the award has been carried out as described.
Director’s signature Chair of Management Committee
| | |Signature: |
| | | |
| | | |
|Professor Davina Cooper | |Professor John Baldock |
|Date: | |Date: |
Host Institutional authorization (for example Vice-Chancellor or Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research))
|Signature: |Institutional Stamp: |
|Print name (including title) | |
|Professor John Baldock | |
|Position: Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, University of Kent | |
|Date: | |
Partner Institutional authorization (for example Vice-Chancellor or Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research))
|Signature: |Institutional Stamp: |
|Print name (including title) | |
|Position: | |
|Date: | |
Partner Institutional authorization (for example Vice-Chancellor or Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research))
|Signature: |Institutional Stamp: |
|Print name (including title) | |
|Position: | |
|Date: | |
Please return 4 copies of the completed report to: Sally Hitch, Senior Awards Officer, Research Centres (Monitoring), The AHRC, Whitefriars, Lewins Mead, BRISTOL, BS1 2AE
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